From the production of the Nobel Prize winner Han Kang – eight novels, three short story books, one of poetry – there are up to the present only four books translated into Spanishbut even so in many Spanish-speaking countries there are only two: The vegetarian y Greek class. On the other hand, the novels Blanco y human acts They are hard to find.
The vegetarian
By Han Kang
eBook
Now, that the name of the Korean author has gone around the world, the publisher Penguin Random House announces that it will be released in Spanish on December 5 Impossible to say goodbyewhere the renowned South Korean writer addresses a dark episode of the history of South Korea: the Jeju Uprising. This event, also known as the Jeju massacrebegan on April 3, 1948 and resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 people due to the South Korean army’s repression.
The Jeju Uprising is a topic that has been little explored in the literature, and the choice of Han Kang Centering his new work on this event underscores his commitment to exploring complex and painful themes. The author has been praised for her ability to address difficult issues with sensitivity and depth, which has cemented her reputation in the international literary arena.
Coinciding with the launch of this book, the novel will also hit bookstores. human acts, another work of Han Kang which had already been published previously.
human acts It also has an important political background. In May 1980, the city of Gwangju – where he was born Han Kang– was the scene of a brutal repression that left thousands of victims. For almost two decades, South Korea lived under a military regime which, although it promoted rapid industrialization, did not hesitate to use force to maintain order. Demonstrations, mainly led by young students, were a constant during this period, but were always harshly repressed, resulting in thousands of arrests. The arrival of a new, even more tyrannical, government intensified the restrictions, culminating in the approval of martial law that caused the massacre of Gwangju.
The impact of these events is relived through the experiences of seven characters in the play. human actswhich tells the horrors of torture, fear and anguish of those days. The work highlights the psychological and emotional consequences left by these events, as well as the painful process of searching for the missing and the memory of those murdered. As the author points out, some memories remain indelible and become the only things that last over time.
A thin snow was falling.
The plain on which I found myself bordered on a hill, on whose slope were planted thousands of black trunks. Thick as railroad ties, they were all of different heights, as if they were people of different ages. However, the beams were not straight like sleepers, but slightly tilted and curved, as if they were thousands of skinny men, women and children with drooping shoulders covered in snow.
«Will it be a cemetery? “Are those pieces of wood the tombstones?” I asked myself.
I wandered among the black trunks, on whose cut surfaces snow accumulated like salt crystals, as well as among the mounds that rose behind them. I stopped suddenly when I felt the water under my sneakers. “How strange,” he thought. A while later the water reached my instep. I turned around and couldn’t believe what I saw. The line that could be seen at the end of the plain was not the horizon as he had assumed, but the sea. It was high tide time and the tide was rising.
Greek class
By Han Kang
eBook
“Why would they be buried in a place like this?” I wondered aloud.
The sea was growing visibly. Did the tide rise and fall like that every day? Wouldn’t the water have washed away the bones that were lower down, leaving the mounds empty? There was no time. The flooded graves were beyond repair, but the remains buried higher up had to be moved as soon as possible. It had to be right now, before the sea continued to rise. But how to do it? I was alone and I didn’t even have a shovel. There were so many graves! Not knowing what to do, I ran between the black logs, making my way through knee-deep water.
When I woke up, it had not yet dawned. The snow that fell on the plain, the black trunks, and the rising tide vanished. I stared at the window of the dark room and then closed my eyes. I knew I had dreamed about that city again and I lay there with my cold hand on my eyelids.
The first time I had that dream was in the summer of 2014, a couple of months after my book about the Gwangju massacre was published. For the next four years, I never doubted what that dream meant. However, last summer it occurred to me for the first time that perhaps it was not just related to that city, that perhaps my interpretation was too simplistic, that this hasty and intuitive conclusion was wrong.
It had been almost twenty days since the high temperatures had not dropped during the night. Once again, I was lying on the living room floor next to the broken air conditioner, trying to fall asleep. I had taken several cold showers, but I couldn’t cool off despite having my back resting on the wooden parquet. It was already five in the morning when I noticed that the temperature was dropping slightly. The sun would rise half an hour later, so the moment of grace would be brief. I thought I could finally get some sleep, or rather, I was practically already asleep when it happened. Suddenly, that plain slipped beneath my closed eyelids. As if I were right in front of them, I saw the flakes falling on the thousands of black trunks, the snow glistening like salt on the cut surfaces.
I don’t know why, but I started to shake. It was a shock similar to the moment before crying, but I did not cry nor did my eyes fill with tears. Was it fear? Perhaps anxiety, chills or sudden pain? No, it was a realization, an awakening so cold it made my teeth chatter. It was as if a giant, invisible knife, a heavy iron blade impossible to lift, was hanging from above and I was lying beneath it.